As you've probably noticed by now, MacGuffin's Curse now supports Steam Trading Cards. Hope you like 'em! Pretty happy with how they turned out, in particular the background and the levelling up badges (the foil badge is pretty awesome!).

Our other big thing to happen over the past week was PAX Australia! Although I'm coughing and spluttering from the PAX Pox, it was totally worth it to meet so many lovely people, both those who'd never heard of the game before, as well as existing fans who dropped by to say hello. Thanks so much if you attended, and even if you didn't get to, thanks for playing the game too!

It was pretty damned awesome to have Tycho from Penny Arcade stop by our booth and check out MacGuffin - he really got into it, and absolutely loved the game. Which is one of the best things ever, I think. Having him mention both MacGuffin's Curse and Jolly Rover on the front page of Penny Arcade was, well, pretty freaking awesome, actually.

Also pretty freaking awesome was meeting Ron Gilbert, creator of both Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. He stopped by the MacGuffin booth twice, so that's gotta be good, right? It was great to meet him, and he seemed to be having a great time at PAX. His keynote talk was excellent too, definitely check it out here[au.gamespot.com].

Oh, and this image is the actual banner from our booth. It's ridiculously huge. I can't fit it on the wall. WHY DID I TAKE THIS HOME

Duet, an iOS arcade shooter from Kumobius, the creators of Bean's Quest

Fractured Soul, Endgame's dual-world action platformer, and

Influx, an action puzzler where you control a mysterious sphere

If you like the look of these other games, be sure to help 'em out by upvoting them on their Greenlight pages below:
Black AnnexBean's QuestFractured SoulInfluxWell, except for Antichamber. You can buy that right now.

After doing a bit more digging through my hard drive, I found this piece of unused art we got concepted. I'm pretty sure you know who this guy is. It's not entirely finished (there's a couple of smaller elements that I would have gotten added had we gotten the okay to do this), but I figure it's best for you lot to see it rather than have it unseen forever. I think the adaption of the cel-shaded style turned out really well, and he looks quite nice against our other character portraits.

The plan was to have The Heavy tie into the game, as an exclusive for the Steam version. At a point in the game, you'd discover a special shop fully decked out with various guns and long ammo chains decorating the walls. This shop would belong to The Heavy, and would be how you'd unlock the planned Team Fortress 2 items (the concept which you probably saw in an earlier post). As you progressed through the main game, you'd be able to find special items which could be traded to him for the TF2 items. This art was used to give an idea of how a conversation dialogue would look between Lucas and The Heavy (which is why it's in our portrait style).

We pitched the idea to Valve around the same time we ptiched the game, but unfortunately this element didn't happen. Sometimes ideas just can't go ahead, for whatever reason.

It's HALLOWEEN (well, it will be soon enough). So, a couple of things to celebrate the spooky-spookering festivities, and scary things like popular celebrities.

First off, there's this super cool wallpaper[www.brawsome.com.au] that you can get from the MacGuffin's Curse website. Commissioned to celebrate Halloween (and because I wanted a new cool picture, dammit!), this crossover piece features Wolf Lucas and Judy from MacGuffin's Curse meeting up with Joey Malone and Rosa Blackwell from Wadjet Eye Games' Blackwell Deception (which you can also get on Steam). Thanks heaps to the very talented Matt Cummings[www.eiffelart.ca] for this piece, I absolutely love it, and I hope you do too.

SECOND! HOLY CRAP! BUNDLE! MacGuffin's Curse is in the Indie Royale Halloween Bundle[www.indieroyale.com], along with MORE GAMES! Do you like games? I LOVE games. (I apologize for all the capitals but I have had to keep this quiet for a while and I am so excited.) YOU GET:

MacGuffin's Curse

Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

Home

Pathologic

EvilQuest

MacGuffin's Curse will give you a DRM free copy (if you're into that thing), a Steam key, and a Desura key too! And of course, if you're the .00001% of the population that plays games on their Mac (like me, boy what a sucker I am), you get Mac versions too!

So, grab it quick smart! Buy copies, give them to your friends! Remember, Halloween is the season of giving! No, wait, that's Christmas. Well, Halloween kind of is, I mean, there's all those random kids going door-to-door like salespeople and getting candy for nothing...

During development, things always, ALWAYS get cut. Unfortunately, that's just how it is. Way early on, one of the things I wanted to do for MacGuffin's Curse was to reward Steam users with special stuff as they progressed through key points in the game. We both thought that it would be cool to try and incorportate Team Fortress 2 stuff into the game as extras - a lot of other games seemed to be doing it, so it was worth a try! Unfortunately, we weren't able to get it happening.

But I can't sit on this pitch art any longer, so here's what we had planned. There were four key elements to this costume. All items (excluding the amulet, which could be worn by any class) were designed for the Heavy:

Lupine Twine Amulet - A pin/badge based prop, based on the amulet that Lucas swipes in the game.
Shaggy 'n' Sharp - A hat prop that gives The Heavy super-cool mutton chops and a wolf muzzle. Sideburns would be either red or grey-blue, depending on whether you were on Team Red or Blu.
Handy Claws - Based on The Heavy's Killing Gloves of Boxing melee weapon, these werewolf claws look really awesome!
The Wolfpack - Based on The Heavy's Minigun primary weapon, this was the thing I was most proud of. I really love how awesome it turned out, and the idea of having it "really howl!" when you kept the minigun idling would have made for some great psychological warfare as they could hear a howling gun off in the distance!

Alas, none of this ever happened, but at least we've still got the super cool promotional art.